The oldest of feuds

There are many arguments for the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the simplest is to compare three conversations.

Here is the first:

The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted company with him, 'Look all round from where you are towards the north and the south, towards the east and the west. All the land within sight I will give to you and your descendants for ever. I will make your descendants like the dust on the ground: when men succeed in counting the specks of dust on the ground, then they will be able to count your descendants! Come, travel through the length and breadth of the land, for I mean to give it to you.'

Genesis 14.14-17

Here is the second:

The angel of the LORD met her near a spring in the wilderness, the spring that is on the road to Shur. He said, 'Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?' 'I am running away from my mistress Sarai,' she replied. The angel of the LORD said to her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her.' The angel of the LORD said to her, 'I will make your descendants too numerous to be counted.' Then the angel of the LORD said to her:

'Now you have conceived, and you will bear a son, and you shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard your cries of distress. A wild-ass of a man shall he be, against every man, and every man against him, setting himself to defy all his brothers.'

Genesis 16.7-12

Here is the third:

And the LORD was there, standing over him, saying, 'I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give to you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants shall be like the specks of dust on the ground; you shall spread to the west and the east, to the north and the south, and all the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.'

Genesis 28.13-14

The first conversation is between God and Abram, the father of the Jews. The second is between God and Hagar, the servant of Sarai, Abram's wife. The third is between God and Jacob, Abram's grandson. The implications of each conversation reverberate throughout the ages in a boundless torrent of divinely-inspired wars over the same tiny patch of land. The Jews can say in truth that God here promised them the land. These are the implications of the first and third conversations. The Arabs, though promised many descendants, were not promised land. This is the implication of the second conversation.

The Arabs can trace their lineage back to Hagar, the servant girl who slept with Abram to give birth to Ishmael. The second conversation indicates that Ishmael will be defiant towards his brothers. Again, there is no promise of land being given to Hagar and her son from God. Is it any wonder he and his offspring are jealous?

The implications for this are broad. But the simplest interpretation is that Ishmael and his descendants - the Arabs - set themselves against Abraham's descendants by Sarah - the Jews. Why? Because the descendants of Jacob were promised the land, and the descendants of Ishmael weren't. Can Middle Eastern politics be this simple? The Book of Books seemingly makes it so.

Why all this history? Unit 101 was founded for this very reason: to protect the newly founded state of Israel from Arab terror. Sacred history reveals that Arab hatred is neither new nor mysterious: it is little more than an enormous and bloody case of sibling rivalry.